


Your Love Is Like a Shadow on Me All of the Time

by OwnThyself



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Background Relationships, Bakery and Coffee Shop, Baking, But They Don't Have to Carry It Alone, Can't Keep Karate Dads Out Of Karate Kid Business, Cupcakes, Deviates From Canon, Do Koi Fish Dream of Beautiful Things?, Domestic Bliss, F/F, Girls Kissing, Heart-to-Heart, Hurt/Comfort, No Lesbians Die, Romantic Fluff, Samantha LaRusso Knows, Shy Senseis Learning to Love, Sweet Heroines Carry Trauma, Tory Nichols Is More Than Her Murder Eyes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-19 08:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29747826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwnThyself/pseuds/OwnThyself
Summary: The first time Tory tastes Samantha LaRusso's sugar, she cries.
Relationships: Samantha LaRusso/Tory Nichols
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32





	1. Sprinkles and Magical Creatures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarkAstarte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarkAstarte/gifts).



> It's a truth that, among the many wondrous things CK Canon gets right, they get the interiority of Tory Nichols, so far, dismally wrong. This is less fix it, more re-envision the landscape. And the landscape is pretty gay. 
> 
> This chapter and those that will follow contain disparagements and character-specific denunciations of mental health/illness.

The first time Tory tastes Samantha LaRusso's sugar, she cries. 

She peels back the lid of the pastel pink box on her doorstep, grimaces a _what the fuck_ at the miniature dessert inside. A lilac mermaid's tail rises from a pink frosted little dome of sponge, cherry and... gouache? Ganache? Who left this, and what do they want in return, what do they want Tory to exchange for the unsolicited present tied in a satiny bow? She's about to cross the shitty quadrangle of the apartment complex to throw it in the trash, but a very small note falls from the box, her name written in tidy cursive in lilac sparkly ink. Tory lifts it with a fingertip, carries dessert box and note to the formica counter, and slashes the baby envelope open with a butter knife. A floral slip of paper peeks out, almost like it's shy to be read but came dressed up to the surprise party anyways. 

_Tory --_

_Two things. First thing, you've never said you're sorry, but I know you are, and that's also not really what this is about, or for. It's more the second thing, which is -- I'm sorry, too. And sorriest of all I never said so when it might have made the most difference._

_\-- Samantha LaRusso_

_P.S. I'm giving karate duels to the death a rest, for something sweeter. I hope you do, too._

Tory really wants to fling the whole mess into the garbage for a solid minute. She paces the small apartment, quiet so she doesn't wake her mom, because finally, finally, the new drugs are doing the work the first thirteen combinations of shitty drugs couldn't accomplish, and yesterday her mom smiled in a way that wasn't a cheap dimestore pageant for her and her brother, which made Tory lock the bathroom door to fully be able to tremble for a minute at the shock, unlooked for, unasked because she couldn't afford it, of something free and fair and actually goddamned good. Okay. One minute of weakness yesterday, and here's today's sixty seconds. You get another minute to snap out of it, lady, she tells herself, putting her fist into the cup of her hand instead of into the cheap stucco. The minute passes, and now it's time to throw this fucking... what is it, what is she even trying to pull... this diabetic trojan horse bullshit, this sly sappy Encino feint... if she thinks she'll trick Tory with this, some icing before the sucker punch, then she's wrong. Godfuckingdamn, she's wrong about her opponent, like everyone else has been too. So the only course of action is clear. Get rid of the offending mermaid-tail cupcake. Bury the heat-seeking missile if you can't burn it, right?

Except, and it's really no one's fucking business but hers, Tory's hungry. So she eats it instead, and gets seven new kinds of angry about how good it is. Is this the kind of thing you're supposed to tell your state-appointed shrink? In the full three months of mandatory counselling visits since the suspension, sitting boots-up on a lumpy pea-coloured refurbished crazy-person lounge chair with a styrofoam cone cup of crappy drip coffee, the full subject of Sam LaRusso is one she's managed to skirt. It's so much worse now that, for the first time, Tory's got a counsellor who cares, one with a soft voice and a pileup of floofy dark hair, one who leans forward and looks you right in the eye socket. Put a swishy teal dress and a star badge on her and she could walk around on a Federation starship. It sure feels like she can peek into Tory's cracked-open skull and intuit some thoughts she's never said. Some things she's still pretty sure are bound for the grave. But it bothers her that they want to push up from the underground on their way to her stupid mouth. She'd better remember to keep it shut, take the free semi-stale pastries, and get gone at the end of each obligatory hour. Tables at the so-greasy-its-biohazardous-spoon aren't gonna wait themselves, after all. 

Not everyone's got the luxury of trading in real life for something sweeter. Even if it's a surprise so soft and delicate and rich all in one improbable tonguepunch that it makes Tory's eyes sting, her mouth quirk. She licks her lower lip clean of confetti-studded frosting and heads to the bathroom to brush her teeth in defiance. Something about the unsanctioned mini cake delivery doesn't sit right in her stomach or her head, and though she's developed a knack for shoving dreams to the very back detention cells of her mind, they spring free when she finally gives in to sleep. Usually when water's appeared in her assortment of night bullshit, it's deep and dirty and drowns her. Tonight, though, without the help of anything in the big leafy CBD family, she's sailing, hair legit flowing behind her like all the ocean breezes know her name and aren't sick of it. And there are mermaids. Fins, scales, strong hips, sliding through the blue sea like something wild and ancient is at work in the world, and it actually works, and it's actually good. In her dream she swims and swims with them and doesn't get tired, though when she wakes up she feels like she's been through the most wearying shift of her life. She doesn't care. Tory just wants to go back. 

She thinks that's what makes her maddest of all. 

Tory rummages in the paper trash Damien's already neatly organized for recycling before school, finds the stupid box and flips it over in search of a label. "God, that's a dumbass name," she swears, dragging on her jacket and swiping the keys to her mom's barely-running sedan. The medicaid nurse that Sensei Lawrence insisted on paying up til the end of the year is in her mom's room, and quiet laughter echoes off the pastel pink walls Tory painted the last time she got out of juvy. Good, Tory thinks, trying to squelch the thing in her chest before it grows up to be hope, that's two days in a row of Angelica Nichols making happiness and meaning it. She slips out without bothering nurse and patient, not wanting to foul the mood by accident. She doesn't intend to be gone long. 

The vegan cupcakery and organic coffee shoppe -- because of course that's what the Instagram bio says by way of description -- is open earlier on Saturdays, presumably to catch the hipstery douchebag inspirational rush, but it suits Tory's purposes to a frosted macchiato tee. She's just gonna get in there, say her piece, and fuck off. A simple warning not to send any more free fake-friendly sweet things should be enough. Except when she pulls up and parks, a bunch of destined-to-wait-tables screenwriters are shuffling out with compostable cups, leaving the little store empty of everyone besides her and the proprietress. 

Who happens to be Samantha LaRusso in a yellow, mermaid-tail decorated dress, a crisp white apron knotted around her slender waist, her scarred inner arm patterned with a trio of healed scars. They don't bleed anymore, but they still rise from Sam's arm, Tory thinks as their eyes collide across the sugary creatures in the shop window. They rise like the sea. 


	2. A Little Mystery to Figure Out, Babe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samantha LaRusso's got a proposition. Powdered sugar is involved.

"Oh, you came," Samantha says, wiping her hands down the front of her apron. They don't even leave trace marks of flour or glitter or whatever it is that runs the secret engine room of this cheerful little place. Like nothing incriminating can stick to the other girl.

She crosses the floor to Tory, her eyes focused and alert and bright, bright blue. Tory straightens up, a lick of energy rushing through to the tips of her fingers -- just about ready to curl into fists, if that's what this is really going to be, what it's gotta be -- but Little Miss Cupcake walks past her, flips the pastel pink sign from 'Open' to 'Closed' and drives the deadbolt home in a smooth click. "You weren't looking for your Sensei, were you? He just left," Sam adds, back still turned as she moves around the small eating space, collecting laminated menus with a stylized graphic of a half winged horse flipping its sparkling tail over a cursive array of fancy dessert descriptions.

"What," Tory says, because she's gotta say something. Also, _what._

"Your sensei," Sam repeats, turning to stack up more menus, those ridiculously blue eyes back on Tory's now, unblinking and untroubled. Sam doesn't look like she's lost a night of sleep since the shit that went down at school. No bags, no telltale grey hairs, not a solitary stress line hanging around the set of her soft lower lip. Yeah, she's about as unmarked as a girl can be. With a few noticeable exceptions. "You know, tall, scowly, blond? Still convinced _Eagle Fang_ is a name with kickass attitude? He just left, with my dad."

What in the frosted fucking flakes is even happening, Tory thinks, making sure to keep her face neutral, working her jaw slightly to keep it from clenching stiff and freezing that way, freaked out like a nightmare mannequin. No, this is fine. There's no need to freak out, except she had the best sweetest thing in her life for dessert and her wavy-haired nemesis with velvety cheeks and a killer uppercut put it in the pit of her stomach just to mess with her, and somehow Sensei Lawrence and Mr. LaRusso are hanging out at this place in whatever free time fiftysomethingyear old ex-ish-rivals with not-exactly-warring anymore dojos have to kill. This is officially too much shit for her paygrade, since she isn't making a dime here and, Sensei's help or not, she really needs to put dollars into every hour, somehow. Why is she even. Here?

Samantha frowns slightly, moves towards her again like she's going to touch her, and that's not something that's gonna be happening today or any ever when, Tory thinks, backing up and putting a red and white checker-clothed table between them. "Tory," Sam says, and that's enough of that, too. Tory didn't come here to listen to her name echoed back at her, soft and full like Christmas morning in a rent-controlled Reseda apartment with a not-broken fridge and eggnog with candy cane straws in not-paper cups but who knows, handthrown stoneware or something. She feels a dull, uneasy pain at her temples, feels her empty belly turn over and say uncle, demanding greasy, filling truck-stop eggs and corned beef hash. When she leaves this place with its truly dumbass name, that's where she's gonna drive the sedan. She'll park and eat and refuse to make her mind make sense of anything at all. Then she'll go home, get dressed and go the fuck to work where no one gives a damn about what she wants, and absolutely no one will bring her an espionage pastry designed to grant her jacked up sleep and crazy, shimmery dreams. 

"No," Tory says, her voice sharper than she plans, "I'm not. You sent me a cake and I wanna know why." 

It sounds shrill and ridiculous, but she can't walk it back now, especially when she doesn't have the home advantage, trapped in this place that smells like vanilla and cinnamon and other fancier things beyond Tory's nose or knowledge. The cozy shop feels bigger than its square footing and floor plan, too. It must be the apple white and slightly darker green trim Sam's got on the walls, the way she's arranged the furniture – nothing new in here, but everything’s polished and clean as churchmice – the distance between the vintage jukebox and the register, a small porcelain saucer up top with spare change. That leave some spare change, take some spare change shit. It’s supposed to be, what, ethical economics? To Tory it’s always felt like a game for people with activated charcoal latte budgets, while there are other folks who’d use the whole plateful of quarters and crumpled bills for goddamned bread and cheese. It shouldn’t make her mad, but it does. Oh fucking well, she thinks, watching a shadow pass over Sam’s face, like Tory’s smashed the place up without even trying, crumpled its antiquey kitschy heart into dirty foil paper. What’s one more crime to add to the juvenile rap sheet for Miss Nichols? 

“You’re the one who made me something and sent it to me with your… what, your store branding? You don’t get to look at me like I murdered Puff the Magic Dragon just by standing here,” Tory says, horrified to hear herself going on. Why can’t she just shut the fuck up and leave? What does it matter, what Little LaRusso wanted to do or tried to pull? She, Tory, has damn well made her point. The way the other woman’s looking at her, Tory doesn’t think she’s gonna get anything else with bows and pre-diabetic bombs laid on her doorstep anytime soon. And that’s good. That’s exactly right. 

Except Samantha LaRusso, the one person in the Valley who should be the most afraid of her, sits in one of the checkered-cute chairs, looks up at Tory and says, soft but clear as crystal, “I’m glad you’re here.” Bonnie Raitt cues up on the old-timey Wurlitzer and yeah, Tory decides she’s gonna sit too because this isn’t going anything like she’d planned. She pulls the opposite chair to Sam’s, resists the urge to park her scuffed boots on the checkercloth like they’re in a straight-to-DVD B-rated 80s high school teenybopper movie. No rugged golden-haired quarterbacks here, no dance montages in the food court, and definitely no kisses on the football field in the pouring rain. No kisses at all, Tory thinks, holding her breath for a count, a count and a half, as Sam smiles at her. 

“I don’t mean to look at you like… what you said,” Sam replies, genuine but not apologizing either. Her hair’s combed back into a French braid, and sparkling in her plush lobes there are twin silver mermaid’s tails, matching the pattern on her dress. “Like I said in my note, I’m trying to put the past few months – the parts that sucked – in my rearview. I sent you something from _Sprinkles and Magical Creatures_ …”

Tory tries not to laugh, but to her credit, Sam doesn’t blanch or back down at the sound of the undignified snort across the table.

“… because I figured you did, too. The look in your eyes when you. After you.”

Ah, fuck. Tory allows herself to drain out the feeling, unbidden and frantic, before it beats its trapped wings too hard in her chest, before she can’t breathe in a flash of what the counsellor calls a panic attack but she refuses to let those words stick to her, because that implies longer and more involved therapy which implies money which isn’t to be spent on her bullshit, if she had it to spend on herself. Which she doesn’t. So panic attacks will just have to fuck off. 

She loses a fair clip of what Samantha’s saying while she gets a hold on herself, but covers it up pretty well, leaning back and reconnecting to the sound of “… part of why I hoped you’d come, too. Cupcakes can’t drive themselves, you know.” 

“What?” Tory says reflexively, chewing the inside of her mouth for one beat, a beat and a half. 

It’s possible that no one on earth has eyes like these, Tory thinks again, making herself look Sam in the eyes. It’s the least she can do, even when it feels like the hardest thing. You’ve got to look your opponent in the face, like their senseis have always done. You’ve got to keep looking even when you’re not too sure what your opponent wants, or why she’s done something sweet and simple and shocking when you haven’t given her anything but pain like a bracelet for keeps. Don’t look away, Nichols, she drums into her skull, and she doesn’t blink, facing down all that blue. Tory’s eyes are blue too, whatever, that’s not the point. The colour is one thing. The focus is something else. Tory already knows what it’s like to have these eyes tell her, ringed with unshed tears, _you keep knocking me down, I’m gonna keep getting back up. Frightened, maybe. But you can find me right here, making my stand. Against you or anyone else who tries me._

“I said, what do you think?” Samantha reaches across the table, extending a hand, fingers curled upwards like a basket with invisible flowers spilling out. “You need a better gig than the ones Sensei Lawrence said you’re working. My cupcake creations need a good driver.” She nods over at the neatly-lettered _Help Wanted_ sign perched in the window. 

Tory would say it’s a bluff, a feint, something designed to sweep her off her feet in all the wrong ways, but she also knows enough to know when Sam LaRusso’s being dead serious, and this is serious with a sweet, sunshine and salted caramel Cali smile. She blinks once, then again, as Samantha grins, presents her pearly-painted fingertips to seal the deal, and asks, “So. Partners?”


	3. All the Greed and All the Gall

"Hah, oh shit," Sensei John Lawrence, improbably kitted out in a crewneck tee shirt with a pattern of a dancing hachimaki-wearing bonsai, says as he swings open the front door to Miyagi-Do. He's spry for an old dude, Tory'll give him that, since he catches the box of winged-cat crullers one-handed, shaking his head as he narrows his eyes at her -- not in aggression, which is a look Tory's seen on her sensei a thousand times, if she's seen it once. No. This is something new. It looks a hell of a lot like pity, even behind the easygoing laugh, and she won't stand for that. She's Tory Goddamned Nichols, Dojo of Motherfucking One, and she doesn't need any charity, kindness or tender heart BS.

It's just a shame she's gotta make her stand with these pink gauze wings on her back, that's all. 

"Shut up," she growls, disrespectful but it feels like she's goddamned entitled, after the syrupy strangeness of the past few days. She steps back, glowers at the man across from her like he should know exactly what he’s done wrong. To his credit, he looks like he does. Sensei pops open the dessert box, tugging at the ornate bow Sam made – _like Sensei’s gonna care about the bows, LaRusso_ , Tory’d told her while they packed the back of Angelica’s sedan with orders, but Sam was adamant, in that prissy particular Sam Miyagi-Do all-A’s honor roll way of hers. 

“We bow one box, we bow them all, Tory,” she’d said with the tone of a kung fu master dispensing great wisdom, and also a little bit like sugar wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Ironic, Tory thought, considering. 

Sensei pulls out one of the pastries, a cruller glazed with iridescent lemon icing, topped with moulded cat ears and curled tails in delicate detail, gauzy sugared wings rising from the sweet round dough. He snorts, rolls his eyes in a gesture that’s all Eagle Fang but maybe a bit Valley Girl too, then eats the custom-made thing in two sharp, clean bites, announcing, “Okay, vegan or no vegan, LaRusso’s kid is good at this. Gotta admit. To you, obviously not to LaRusso. How’s it going over there?” 

Tory stares at him, because he cannot be serious. She is, though. Spinning hook kick on steroids serious. Now that her third of the week is done, she’s not leaving til she gets some answers. Sure, picking up the phone was an option, but she wants to hear Sensei Lawrence, in his own words, explain why he went from badass leader to Florence Nightingale narc, without any filters. Besides, delivering crumpets and cream horns and chocolate croissants has been… a lot more interesting than she’d bargained. She’s got some things she wants to tell someone, too. Since she and Diaz split, Sensei’s the closest thing she has to a friend. Not that he needs to know how true that is, or how pathetic. 

“Yeah, okay,” the Valley’s once-upon-a-time most aggressive fighter concedes, powdered icing on his deadly fingertips. “Let’s go out back and talk.”

It’s really peaceful here. Tory’s known peace, by her own calculations. The best peace you can find most times is paid for by someone else: the shrink sessions covered by the state, for one thing. Damien’s pristine textbooks, new scientific calculator and soccer uniforms, all gathered from the private gifted students merit fund Tory hunted down and filled out applications in triplicate for, forging Angelica’s signature perfectly. There’s peace in that, too, watching him cover over the books in crisp brown paper himself, showing him how to handle the used steam iron Tory lifted off her one failed attempt to work housekeeping at that sleazy Tarzana motel. She’d left whistling with her mom’s purse full of little soaps and the uncomfortable red bracelet-bruise of the afternoon shift manager’s hand on her wrist. That had been one week before kickboxing, and five before she’d walked into the rundown, ratty premises of Cobra Kai. 

When life changed. Here it was, changing all over again without the decency to bring a fruit basket first. But you can’t have peace without some of the crummy stuff, like Angelica keeps telling her and Damien. Tory looks around the backyard of Miyagi-Do and decides her mom would like it here, very much. Damien too, he’d do cartwheels in the neat green grass. 

“Nurse service working out okay?” Sensei asks, leading them over to the koi pond. It’s a strange peace, Tory decides as she crouches to a vigilant perch, watching as her teacher rolls up his blue jeans, lowers himself with more grace than the average middle-aged dad type onto the grass, and sticks his bare feet right in there with the fishes, who don’t seem to mind a goddamn, given how they just sort of swirl around his ankles lazily looking for kelp or whatever it is koi eat. Huh. She hadn’t even noticed Sensei was barefoot. _Getting sloppy_ , Nichols, she chides herself, narrowing her eyes at John Lawrence. He’s put the pastries away, which is good, Tory thinks. This is not gonna be a pastries kinda conversation. More like a _how the eff could you betray me_ kind of chinwag, with a side of _what the holy goddamned shit were you thinking, Sensei_ , thrown in. 

“Nope, we’re not starting there,” she flatly says, her voice sounding even more guarded and sealed off than she would choose, if she could choose. She doesn’t think she can make it the way it should be, with gratitude as a gravelly underpinning. The problem is, she is actually really fucking grateful to him for what he’s done. That should make him a problem, too. At least that’s how the maths of being thankful for other folks has usually gone. You stick out your hand to say much obliged, you find yourself walking home with contraband soap and a wrist that aches for days and days. Sensei Lawrence is a tough teacher, but Tory’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop with him, and she’s still waiting. She kinda sorta trusts him, and there’s the problem, honestly. She knows it’s gonna come back to catapult her into shit creek, paddle-less and naïve, kinda like it’s doing now. She’s standing on the edge of poop embankment, disguised as a chocolate goddamn sea. Tory’s no dumbass. She’s seen _Willy Wonka_. She knows how these things go. You bend down to take one goddamned drink, next thing they’re shooting you through the sucker tubes. 

“Let’s start with you telling Samantha LaRusso I needed employment, and I dunno, expressing to her that poor Tory Nichols is down on her luck, expelled and working three jobs and _trying to turn her life around_ ,” Tory mimics a probation officer’s simpering, sarcastic tone, watching her sensei blink and lean forward, his mouth thinning out as if he’s ready to recoil, make an argument to her face all snake-like, except Tory finds, crouched here amidst the gently falling leaves, the huge ornamental stones proclaiming mysterious zen wisdom in kanji she can’t read and the peaceful koi who’ve never known a day’s goddamned hard work in their scaley kelp-gorging lives, she’s got some stuff bottled up, and tough but Sensei’s gonna have to hear it,

“except I didn’t ask you to do any of that, and I am. I am thankful for what you’ve done for Mom, but don’t forget we agreed, we did agree that this is all a loan until I get something regular and can start paying you back, which maybe – ha – maybe that’s why you got me this insane, insane cupcake driver gig for my – her – storybook fantasy vegan organic sweet shop, I don’t…”

“Miss Nichols,” Sensei Lawrence says, quiet, since he’s never actually needed to shout to get her attention or anyone else’s, when he was heading up Cobra Kai. That hasn’t changed though so much else has. If anything, he’s quieter now than in all the time she’s known him. _Still_ , maybe, like the glassy surface of the water under which the fishes are probably gossiping about all the mess humans make in the breathing world up above. “Tory. Breathe.”

She’s not sure if it’s an order from her karate master, or a request from a friend. Deciding it falls somewhere in the chocolate sea-space in between, she listens and forces herself to inhale. Exhale. Rinse. Repeat. Tory shuts her eyes, succumbs for an unguarded moment to the rhythm of it. When she speaks again, she’s quieter, too, but can’t help saying, “I’m still mad.” He nods like he knows, and sits back, not breaking eye contact in this very specific way, like it’s an unwritten code somewhere that somebody drummed into his head when he was younger.

“I know. But kid, listen. I didn’t narc on you to Sam LaRusso, and I didn’t tell her anything like what you’re thinking. I knew you could use better money, rich organic vegan glutenless whatever the hell Encino-Sherman Oaks-Santa Monica money, money you make yourself. It pays better, right?” He waits for her to answer, receives a noncommittal _hmph_ which they both know means he’s right. “Yeah,” he says, but not unkindly, “I knew you’d be pissed, but you could at least make bank and be mad. Besides,” he pauses, looks out into the middle distance for a moment, “I dunno. I’m not your shrink, I’m your sensei, but I think. Yeah. You know. It might be good.” 

Tory stares at him, sees him tense for the first time since she alighted with her pink wings and fight face in this quiet enclave far from the city, the last stop on her day’s delivery route to bring sweet things to Mr. LaRusso and his – dojo partner? Ex-enemy? Yang to Mr. LaRusso’s ying? All she knows is, Sam said _your Sensei will be there; he’s usually there that time of day_. And so he is. 

“Is that why you’re here, Sensei?” she asks, trying to do what he did, that magic way you can carry your voice in your throat so you’re not unkind. Tory thinks it matters, it does matter, and she’d like to learn how. She took up kickboxing to keep guys from leaving marks on her she didn’t want put there, so some voice training should be a piece of cake, with sprinkles on top. “Are you here because. It might be good, for you, too?” Her teacher hears her, laughs but not at her, and looks into the water as sunset begins to move its way over the little garden where fighters, resisters and pacifist badasses are made. Tory begins to wonder if she hasn’t missed more than she realized. She thought she’d make up for the training sessions she couldn’t take because of work and counselling stuff, but it seems like you’ve got to be here to see things changing, too. You can’t take it for granted that the world you know is gonna stay still, or play nice. 

Except Sensei Lawrence is smiling now, a private kind of smile between himself and someone who maybe isn’t here on the premises but who is close, etched in every inspiring rock and handmade windchime. He smiles into his creased palms briefly, then looks at her, still smiling, emitting a small huff. Nothing bitter about it, Tory thinks, scanning the cast of his jaw, the look in his eyes. Nothing but mercy there, today. Huh. Wow. 

“Yeah,” John Lawrence tells her, quiet and earnest and serious about something that isn’t beer or brawling or American steel, “I’m here because it’s uh, it’s really damn good.”

The sun’s fucked off by the time Sensei sends her home, with half a casserole that Mr. LaRusso’s made – she watched the very faintest of blushes glow over her teacher’s cheeks as he slipped and said _Daniel_ , looking for all the world like it was a sappy accident he really relished – something green and healthy and full of vegetables, and Sensei Lawrence tells her she’s doing him a blessed charity by taking this with her since there’s another one in the freezer with ‘Johnny, eat your greens’ scrawled on the foil in sharpie. Except it tastes good, he tells her. It’s actually real good. 

This is not how laying down the Nichols, Dojo of One Law was supposed to go, Tory reflects as she puts the sedan in reverse and backs out the gravel driveway. Sensei leans against the doorjamb in the low light, watching her off. He’s got a plaid dishcloth hooked in his front pocket, and looks like he grew up here in this quiet little house, on this quiet little street. You wouldn’t think, to lay eyes on him, that he’s capable of breaking bone and busting down doors, or pushing teenagers to their limits in ways PTA boards would frown on, to make them more of what they already are. But that’s people for you. You don’t know what they’re packing, heat or heart or any of the fucked up stuff in between. This, though. Whatever this is, it’s not a fucked up situation. It feels like something Tory, Damien and Angelica have fought tooth and bleeding nail for, one rental address and dented mailbox to the next. Somehow, it feels a lot like a home. 

Just as she turns the corner, her pink wings detached carefully and stowed in back, she sees Sensei Lawrence fish in his other pocket for his dinged-up cell phone. She watches as he holds it up to his ear and breaks into a giant, light up the night grin, turning and waving at her before heading back inside. It looks like someone’s coming home to join him. Huh. Wow.

Tory takes a minute in the car after killing the engine, admitting to herself that even this crappy Reseda complex has its charms by night. She can smell carnitas sizzling for the upstairs neighbours’ dinner, hear excited footsteps on the cheap tile flooring pattering out hellos for parents who’ve been working hard all day. In one of the units, something brassy and warm starts echoing in tinny speakers, filling up the courtyard and making it feel like a private festival just for her and her all-over-the-place thoughts. Wild, Tory thinks. No other word for this evening, these past few days, will really do. She checks her phone, sees a message from Sam LaRusso up top, and frowns. They’ve gotten by with minimal check-ins and if not frosty, not exactly room temp politeness, so far. Tory flicks the screen unlocked, reads and tries to school her scowl. 

“Hey, how’d it go? He was there, right? And he liked the meowcrullers? I hope he saved some for my dad!” 

Tory rolls her eyes, because what is Sam implying, that Sensei ate them all? She doesn’t plan on replying there and then but the IM’s sent before she even thinks about it. 

“Uh, Sensei’s not a sugar ogre, thanks. When I left there were more than half still there. Think your Dad was on his way over. Also _meowcruller_ is an insult to language itself, LaRusso, could we not.”

She shoves her phone in her back pocket while she retrieves the pink wings to wipe them down before her next batch of deliveries, taking the healthy casserole in her free arm while she locks the car and sets the alarm. It’s a peaceful courtyard most of the time, but you never know what you never know. If they lose the sedan, it’s a shit out of luck festival, no other kind. The phone buzzes again as Damien opens up the front door to the apartment, hugging her tight and warm and yeah. This home stuff. _However you can get it, Sensei_ , Tory thinks, hugging her baby brother back just as tight til he squirms and wriggles out to heat up her dinner, already telling her a mile a minute about the very cool thing he got to dissect in Biology today. Get it and guard it and tell the world it’s yours, anyone who doesn’t like it can just merrily fuck off. Besides, she smiles to herself, who in the fuck’s gonna come up against two former All Valley champs? 

It’s not like those guys don’t know a thing or two about finding and serving up sweet revenge. Now it looks like the rest of the world better watch out. Good. Yeah. Tory thinks that could be really fucking good, after all. She pulls her phone from her pocket as she twirls marinara pasta with cut-up hotdogs, Damien’s culinary specialty, into her mouth. He’s gonna love this healthy casserole thing; at a glance it seems to contain three cruciferous vegetables previously unknown to her. 

_ “I heard you got sent home with the HealthPie. My condolences, but honestly it’s pretty good. It’ll grow on you.” _

“Mm. Once it doesn’t grow in me, like a forest. Banzai.” Tory smirks, because that’s witty as hell.

_ “Ha. You’re funny, Nichols. Glad today went well, though you didn’t really say. I think from your non-murderous silence that it went well. You haven’t sent me a single angrymoji all day. So. See you tomorrow for the breakfast deliveries, partner?” _

“Yeah.” Tory hits send, leans back and listens to Angelica chatting animatedly with the night nurse. She wonders what the koi at Miyagi-Do are dreaming about tonight, and whether or not Daniel LaRusso hates her guts for making his only daughter’s porcelain skin run red. Tory shakes her head sharply, sending the thought skittering back into deep waters from which it came, uninvited and definitely without a fruit basket first. She picks up her phone again, adds a final message to Samantha LaRusso for the night, before bounding into her mom’s pastel pink bedroom.

“Partner.”


End file.
